Kelly was asked if he felt sorry for Brown during the 2009 scandal that resulted from his assault on then-girlfriend Rihanna.
"I only feel sorry for weak people," he responded. "And mostly what I've come to find is that the weak people are the ones that are the haters. The ones that's talking about Chris Brown, or R Kelly, or anybody that's successful? I feel sorry for them, not Chris Brown, because he's obviously one strong individual to be able to do what he's done."
"He got knocked down a little bit and he climbed up," Kelly continued. "You know, that sounds like Ali to me. That sounds like Martin Luther King to me. That sounds like a lot of the greats that have walked this earth. It even sounds a little bit like Jesus to me."
He added: "I'm not saying that Chris Brown is Jesus or R Kelly is Jesus. But Jesus is the No 1 inspirer of someone being knocked down and rising again."
Kelly, who recently released new album Black Panties, has had some highly publicized ups and downs in his career and he credits his fans with helping him make it through.
"We're kinda married, you know?" he says. "[It's a] for better or for worse thing. It took me to go through something like that to realise that my fans feel the same way about me that I do about them, and that inspired me musically, to a level that you will never be able to understand."
[The Guardian]
